Tissue Culture of Maize
Irrespective of the plant species, there are a number of common features that apply to most tissue culture programs. The technique of cell and tissue culture has been widely developed, and much work has been done on growth, metabolism and differentiation of tissue culture of dicotyledons (Yamada, 1977, in Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture, Reinert and Bajaj (eds.), pp. 144-159, Springer-Verlag, Berlin). However, successful tissue culture studies with monocotyledons (e.g., the cereal crops such as maize, rye, barley, wheat, sorghum, oats, millet and rice) leading to plant regeneration are not as well documented. Success is frequently dependent on choosing donor tissues for culture initiation which come from plants of appropriate genotype as well as physiological and development states. Other features which are also important include the organic and inorganic composition of the growth medium and the physical environment in which the cultures are grown.
In maize, the development of tissue cultures capable of plant regeneration was accomplished after the identification of appropriate genotypes and donor tissues (Green and Rhodes, 1982 in Maize for Biological Research, W. F. Sheridan (ed.), pp. 367-371, Plant Molecular Biology Association, Charlottesville, Va.). The first method developed which yielded regenerated plants from tissue cultures of maize used immature embryos as donor tissues. With N6 or MS growth media (defined below in Section 6) and a synthetic auxin, such as 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), tissue cultures develop rapidly from the scutellum of the embryos. The resulting cultures are developmentally heterogeneous and contain a variety of tissue types. Removal of the 2,4-D from the growth medium permits these cultures to produce large numbers of regenerated plants. Cultures of this type have proved capable of regenerating plants for up to three years.
Another donor tissue from which regenerable tissue cultures of maize have been initiated are immature tassels. This tissue is the male flower and as it matures it is responsible for pollen production. Immature embryos, influorescences, and the few other tissues in cereals from which regenerating cultures have been initiated all have the common characteristic of juvenility. Regenerated plants obtained from tissue cultures are grown to maturity in a glasshouse, growth chamber, or field. The progeny seed produced in crosses with regenerated plants permits the evaluation of subsequent generations. The basic tissue culture methods developed for corn have been extended to many other cereal species.
It is now possible to reliably initiate cultures of corn which have two important characteristics. One is that the callus cultures are friable, meaning that they are soft and loose in texture. This property is important because cultures of this type exhibit rapid growth and it facilitates the initiation of suspension cell cultures. The other valuable attribute of these friable cultures is their ability to form very large numbers of somatic embryos. Microscopic examination reveals the presence of many small, organized structures on the surface of the callus. These structures are young somatic embryos at various developmental stages. These friable cultures will retain their embryogenic potential for as long as two years and have shown the capacity to produce extremely large numbers of somatic embryos.
The somatic embryos in these friable calli develop to maturity when the cultures are transferred to medium containing 5 to 6 percent sucrose and no hormones. After approximately two weeks of growth on this medium, many embryos become quite mature. They germinate rapidly and grow into plants when placed on MS or N6 medium containing 2% sucrose. The plants can then be established in soil and grown to maturity.
It is now well-documented that a high level of genetic variability can be recovered from plant tissue culture. Some of this variability is of agronomic importance. Mutants for disease resistance have been obtained in sugarcane for Fiji disease, early and late blight in potato, and southern corn leaf blight in maize. In rice, maize, and wheat considerable variability for traits inherited as single genes of plant breeding interest have been recovered, including those which control the time of seed set and maturation, seed color and development, plant height, plant morphology, and fertility.
Tissue cultures of maize have been used to recover mutants for disease resistance and amino acid overproduction as described below.
Texas male sterile cytoplasm (cms-T) genotypes of maize are susceptible to the pathotoxin produced by the fungus Helminthosporium maydis race T, while normal cytoplasm (N) genotypes are resistant (Gengenbach et al., 977, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 74: 5113-5117). Similarly, tissue cultures obtained from cms-T genotypes are susceptible to the pathotoxin while N genotype cultures are resistant. The pathotoxin from H. maydis race T was used to select resistant cell lines from susceptible cms-T cultures using a sublethal enrichment selection procedure. After five cycles of increasing selection pressure, cell lines were recovered which were resistant to lethal levels of the pathotoxin. Plants regenerated from these cell lines also were resistant to the pathotoxin and were male-fertile. Genetic analysis of progeny obtained from resistant, male-fertile plants showed that both traits were maternally inherited. Infection of plants with H. maydis race T spores demonstrated that selection for pathotoxin resistance also resulted in resistance to the disease organism by plants.
Selection for resistance to growth inhibition by lysine plus threonine in equimolar concentrations (LT) in tissue cultures of maize yielded a stable resistant line, LT19 (Hibberd and Green, 1982, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 79: 559-563). Genetic analysis of progeny of plants regenerated from LT19 showed that LT resistance was inherited as a single dominant nuclear gene. Tissue cultures initiated from resistant embryos required 5-10 times higher levels of LT to inhibit growth than did cultures from LT-sensitive embryos. LT resistance in LT19 was expressed as reduced sensitivity of root and shoot growth to the presence of LT. The free pool of threonine was increased 6 times in cultures initiated from immature embryos of LT-resistant plants, and 75-100 times in kernels homozygous for LT19, as compared to cultures and kernels from LT-sensitive embryos and plants, respectively. Overproduction of free threonine increased the total threonine content in homozygous LT19 kernels by 33-59%. The results demonstrate that LT resistance selected with tissue culture methods was heritable and was expressed in cultures, seedlings, and kernels.